A Dog’s Orders

What I see is a cluster of colorized blobs, red, orange and yellow, scattered across the blackness like spilled rice. That’s what soldiers see when looking through the infra-red setting; just a bunch of blobs on the screen.

We could switch to a night vision setting and make out more details; clusters of refugees gathered around haphazard tent-burrows, hide flaps propped up over dirty pits. The refugees were Silts, big brawny towering creatures, like giant apes. Their camps spread for miles around every port on the planet. This was their world, but they weren’t allowed off anymore. In night vision you could see family groups etched out in green and black; parents and their unwed siblings tending to howling children. That was my mistake; I really looked at them, saw them for real. All the other guards stuck to the IR, and waited to execute their orders; if a pixilated blob moves, squeeze the trigger until it stops moving. The others around it will scatter back away from the fences. “Good job soldier, have a snack, have a drink.” Pat, pat, have a biscuit.

I scanned the tent city, just like my comrades, but I stuck to night vision, and I kept coming back to the same family. There was no mother, and no aunts or uncles, just a father and two kids. One was an infant, clinging to dad’s chest and begging for food. The other was a cripple.

“Sgt. Florez, cease and desist!” Capt. Theakston’s harsh voice in my headset snapped my attention back where it belonged. I hastily switched back to IR and resumed scanning.

“Sir?” Damn, I sound like an idiot, like a kid.

“Alice, you’re bordering on insubordination. Your only consideration is to keep the rabble out of the port.”

“Sir!” I hated when he called me Alice. I never said he could use my name. If I’d been a man, the captain would call me Florez, or some stupid call sign. But me, I just get Alice, like some little girl. Prick.

He cut the line, so I went back to scanning the camp. The screens of the cockpit wrapped around me, covered in a sea of despairing blobs in primary colors. We all hid inside “Doberman” armor that kept us separated from the Silts; cold, impersonal, inhuman. The armor was necessary when guarding Silts. They were two to three times taller than us, but put a soldier in the cockpit of a Doberman and he was suddenly an alloy monster twice as tall as the biggest warrior the Silts ever had. Inside our machines we were bigger, faster, stronger, and meaner than the rabble. We were a line they could not break through.

As I made another sweep, my machine’s arm twisted so that the cannon it held followed my gaze. It was a high-yeild energy weapon meant for use against bigger war machines than the one I piloted. Now it raked its threat across a sprawl of starving refugees.

My gaze met a blob with a familiar shape. I switched back to night vision, and the blob defined itself into the Silt father and his kids. He was looking at me like he knew…

“Alice!”

“Sir!”

“Sergeant, I’m sending Trevyl out. When he reaches the line give him your place and report back to me.”

Smack, bad dog. “Yes sir.” I wondered if I’d be discharged, or if the captain could possibly find a worse assignment to shove me into.

I switched back to blob-vision once again and resumed sweeping through the motions of vigilance.

A roar of engines and a blazing glow interrupted the quiet. In my rear-view I saw a ship rising up from the port. It was just a little shuttle climbing up to the Union ships orbiting overhead, but the rabble watched it go, envious. Space meant freedom, but space was denied to them. After finally dismantling the Siltussian slave trade, the Union had quarantined the entire race onto their home world. All of their ships were berthed in the ports across their world, and all of the ports were controlled by Union soldiers. Soldiers like me; terriers keeping rats out of the grain.

In the distance a boxy Silt flyer touched down in the middle of the tent city. Armored soldiers poured out and rounded up a few families to take to the work camps. The Silt regime didn’t have a slave empire anymore, but they acted like they still did. Despite the Union’s efforts, they were not changing their ways. Without other races to prey on, they went back to preying on themselves without blinking a big crusty eye. After all, they still had factories and farms to run, and mines to dig.

I watched the efficient Silt press gang, unable to do anything. We were not to interfere unless they attempted to enter the port.

Trevyl approached behind me, his Doberman’s big steel feet pounding the pavement inside the fence.

“Aight Florez, back to the pound. And walk lightly; the Captain ain’t too pleased.”

“Tell me about it.”

Trevyl raised one foot high to step over the razorwire fence. The knee joint of his opposite leg suddenly sparkled with a chain of minor explosions within the armor. “Shit, the servo!” The damaged joint folded under the weight of the massive vehicle. Helpless, Trevyl’s Doberman toppled face-forward to the ground. The electrified fence sparkled as it collapsed under the weight of the crashing titan. I dodged my machine out of the way, barely missing getting knocked over myself. Other guards turned and dashed their machines away, reacting to the surprise before they knew its cause.

Claxons were blaring. I looked forward and saw a sea of red and yellow blobs surging forward in a swell, a tsunami making for the breach.

“Stop them! Stop them!” Capt. Theakston shouted in my headset. I watched the tide coming. “Alice, that’s an order! Fire immediately.”

Fuck. They were coming for me, starving and begging for freedom. If they reached a ship, they could be off and away, free at last. True, the ships overhead would burn them down, but that would also create a fiasco the Union did not want to deal with.

“Fire immediately!”

There was the father, lumbering on all fours with his kids clinging to him. He was at the head of the pack, almost a ton of rushing angry refugee. I was still in IR, but I could recognize that blob just the same. I knew it was him.

“Sgt. Florez!”

No.

I thought it, but I didn’t listen. I mind said no, but my body obeyed like a trained mutt. Fire. Roll over. Woof. I squeezed the trigger, and the blob tumbled to a stop, separating into three distinct lumps of color. Absently I downed a few more blobs, just enough to encourage the rest of the rabble to scurry back into their tented dens. Then I released the trigger and slumped back into the chair.

“Good job Florez. Repair crews are on the way.” Pat, pat. I didn’t really hear him.

My eyes stayed locked on the screen, on the three blobs I could now identify as father, child, and infant. The night was cold. As I watched, the three blobs of color faded down the spectrum until they bled into black, like they had never existed.